CSI Raglan

Oh, now I remember what the other thing I meant to post about Raglan was - CSI Raglan.

There was this dead pig, to be cooked, and it had been arranged that it would be part of a live weapons test to see just what the historical weapons we re-enact would actually do to an organic human-analogue. It was very educational, scary in implication, and I'd urge HEMAists and re-enactors to look into this: I'd brought along my live rapier (17th Century Deschaux pattern, a French type) and used this to determine stuff like how much force does it take to run someone through, what happens when you twist the blade, and so forth.

Nowadays we have our puncture-tested clothing, and debate the calibration of how hard we make a touch with the point of the blade - are we doing it too hard or too lightly?

Long story short, the force required to reach out and press the light switch... put the blade clean through the carcass and our the other side. Think about that for a minute. Now think about this: the force we'd think of a good thrust in SCA fencing - say twice as the light switch - put the blade six inches into the carcass... through mail. Or chainmail as most people call it.

What this means is when you see a movie where they put the tip in and then give it a dramatic shove... In real life it'd already be through the guy. Puncture proofed clothing? With pointy blades it'd make no difference. This is why we have rubber blunts on the points, folks. Twisting the blade left a nice pencil-diameter tube through which any internal fluids would just pour out nicely.

A variety of other weapons were tried - an axe blade didn't cleave, but smashed ribs, a warhammer's spike left a diamond-shaped gusher both with and without mail... A scimitar didn't cleave, but worked well on the thrust. I'm focused on the rapier simply because that was my part. I did take the matching parrying dagger also, but didn't bother use it - I suspect the mail would have stopped it because the wider blade would give the material more surface to push against.

So, yeah, fascinating stuff, lovely bit of experimental learning.

health update

For those wondering, that's the fourth of the initial five double eye injections down. I'm now missing only about three letters of the entire chart from the vision test beforehand with the right eye, and six or so with the left. They did manage to hit a vein in the right eyeball, so it now looks like the bottom half of the white is filled with blood (this doesn't show from the inside, nor is there any discomfort apart from the usual in both) - I wonder how many ebola scares I'll cause in town.

On the diabetic front, they looked at the numbers, still happily in the sixes, and sent for a blood test to check the three-month score (so I didn't hear that at the time, as a different department had borrowed the machine) - the plan is now to discharge me to the GP, do six-monthly blood tests, and prescribe tablets if the numbers creep up. In short, then, my oancreas is happy to continue to work with the right diet and exercise.

Then on the way home the first bus I could have got was over 10 minutes late, and so in such a hurry that the cunt didn't bother to stop for me.